Tear Down The Wall (well, not all of it)
I first visited Berlin in 2006 and found it to be a wonderful city, one whose history was still clearly punctuated by segments of the wall now protected from souvenir hunters by fences. I am sure that I was not the first to contemplate the irony of protecting the wall with fences, but I can see the need. The desire to take a piece home with you is irresistible, “oh this, it is just a stone in my pocket….” I was able to get a piece from an area where there was really nothing but foundation left and it was about to be built over, so I don’t feel so guilty.
I took a few versions of the photo above. I waited until I could get a pedestrian framed just right. The first few were inconveniently timed with the passing of cars. It is strange to think that people walk and drive by it everyday without a glance. I came back to these photos today, the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the wall. I was a senior in college when the wall fell and it seemed like that fall was the beginning of an age of eternal piece. No more threat of nuclear annihilation; we had won. Who could have foreseen the world order of the last twenty years during that moment? Certainly not a college senior caught up in the end of the cold war and hopeful for peace. I still hope for peace, but I am a bit more cynical now.
Still, it was an amazing time full of opportunity, even if some of it has been squandered.
